Quotes / North Korea

Avery Jessup (Elizabeth Banks): And in food news... you've had enough to eat today. Now here with the weather is Johnny Mountain.
Kim Jong-il (Margaret Cho): North Korea, everything sunny all the time always, good time, beach party. Back to you, Aoreeb.

— 30 Rock

"North Korea is willing to go to any lengths for the whole world to honor its demands of 'Ooh, please pay attention to us.'"

—Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report

"Relax, it's North Korea: the nation-state equivalent of the short bus."

—Sterling Archer, Archer

"And now North Korea: the world's Florida."

—John Oliver, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

"It's so surreal. There's nothing normal that happens, ever, in this whole country."

—Shane Smith, Vice News, Inside North Korea 1/3

It would be incautious to characterize an epoch in any country as "modern" when so much else remains traditional and charismatic. A "modern ideology" does not guarantee modernity. There are many examples. North Korea has a majority urban population (60 percent). Two-thirds of the population works in industry or services. It has a gigantic, modern-equipped military and launches rockets...Yet in terms of political practice, it is a hereditary monarchy where senior officials are patriarchally designated "father", "uncle", "brother" and so forth.

— J. Arch Getty, Practicing Stalinism, 2013

Systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, its institutions and officials. In many instances, the violations of human rights found by the commission constitute crimes against humanity. These are not mere excesses of the State; they are essential components of a political system that has moved far from the ideals on which it claims to be founded. The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.

— Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, 2014

"The one you should be careful of is North Korea! They are years away from developing a boat capable of reaching Japan!"

— Sacha Baron Cohen (in-character as Admiral General Shabazz Aladeen), The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

---